It's not a bird; it's not a plane; by golly what is it?
The following article appeared in the Wednesday, October 2, 1991 edition of the LEWISTON MORNING TRIBUNE, which serves the Lewiston Idaho, Clarkston Washington area. Also Washington State University and the University of Idaho both 40 miles to the north. Clarkston and Lewiston are in the Snake River Canyon area of southeastern Washington and Northern Idaho, 20 miles north of Oregon. Elevation is aproximately 600 feet in their dessert canyon, which has a mild snow-free climate. The Snake river and Clearwater river converge there, the gateway to Hell's Canyon. Industries there include the wood and paper products of International Potlatch Corporation, and bullets, ammunition and weaponery of Blount Corporation, a division of Omark, which has recently opened a super secret, government linked, well guarded, installation near the regional airport in south Lewiston...
Lewiston Morning Tribune - Lewiston Idaho - October 2, 1991
IT'S NOT A BIRD; IT'S NOT A PLANE; BY GOLLY WHAT IS IT?
By general assignment reporter SANDRA L. LEE
The 9-year-old saw it first in the northwest sky above Lewiston. Then his 8-year-old friend, and the babysitter, the babysitter's parents, and a friend and her two children, and the people who brought the telescope.
Saturday night it was a bright, multi-colored light that moved up and down and had a "black pointy thing on it."
And there was a ball of clear light, like a silent wave much closer than the blinking light, that lit the sky for several seconds.
Sunday night, there were two of the pulsing lights, one a little closer than the other, but still far away, although they seemed to respond to light directed at them from a flashlight and then from a camera's flash, said Sarah G. Krueger, a Lewiston High School senior.
And Monday night they were back again, and much more active, said Krueger, who set up a watching post on the hill north of Regency Plaza Retirement Center.
Were they UFOs? "I don't have a clue," Krueger said. They weren't airplanes, and she doesn't think they were stars. But flying saucers? "I never even believed in them before, really," she said.
She called Fairchild Air Force Base on the advice of a Lewiston Tribune editor, and someone there told her there was nothing in the air to account for the sitings, she said.
Then she was given the number of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, a private, non-profit organization that documents reports from all of North America.
The volunteer taking calls that night told her it might be a double-star, one star so close to another as to appear as one. But NOT if it was actually changing position.
Margaret Gahner saw it too. It was different than what she and two family members saw 13 years ago in southern Idaho, she said.
That time, they were fishing from a boat at night when three white lights zig-zagged overhead. They were higher than a jet, but not far away like the stars, she said.
It went on for about an hour, Gahner said. "We wanted to get home because we were SCARED."
Robert J.. Gribble, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, was non-committal about his opinion of the moving sighting over Lewiston.
Stationary objects usually are easy to identify, Gribble said. Most of them are scintillating stars whose multiple colors are caused by particles in our atmosphere. Smog. Air pollution.
And bright stars in the northeast and northwest skies draw frequent reports, he added.
"The problem is something at such a distance, of that description, it's almost impossible to make a positive identification."
Every report is kept on file for at least 30 days so information can be pooled. If there are independent reports from the same location, an attempt may be made to put together an onsite investigation, Gribble said.
Investigations are rare nowadays, however. Sightings, once frequent, started tapering off about 10 years ago, he said.
The center was created in 1974 when the U.S. Air Force quit accepting data on UFO phenomena. People had no place to go to make reports where they could expect follow-up, Gribble said.
All the work at the center is done by volunteers.
So was there -- is there -- a UFO over the Lewiston - Clarkston Valley?
Certainly, in the sense that no one has yet identified that multicolored blinking object as being anything specific. Or identified the source of the light.
But could they have been that thing of dreams, a spaceship possibly carrying alien beings?
Sarah Krueger plans to keep watch evenings from about 8:30 to 9:30. Just in case. From her vantage point on the edge of Lewiston Orchards, one was sighted a little over Potlatch Corp. and the other more to the west, over downtown Lewiston or Clarkston.
Take a look. What do you think?
